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Tuesday, June 8, 2010

New column! Our friend Allyson delves into the miasma of Twitter's #musicmonday (on Tuesdays) because nothing says "listen to my music" like a trending topic.

Be afraid Justin Bieber. Be very afraid. —Ed.

Sunday was the MTV Music Awards, yesterday was Prince’s birthday, the new Twilight soundtrack just debuted, Lady Gaga is pushing a new video…and people on Twitter are broadcasting crappy alt-rock from the ‘90s.

Not just alt-rock. Nu-metal. Is there a revival? Am I missing it? (Please let me be missing it.) Nickelback, Incubus, and Linkin Park are popping up all over #musicmonday.

None of these bands has a new album out—in fact, Wikipedia thinks the members of Incubus have been threatening each other and taking out restraining orders. Nickelback is touring but their last album came out in 2008, according to their official site. Linkin Park seems to have been busy getting an awesome logo and putting out charity albums. I suppose I underestimate the endurance of people’s love for (and willingness to publicly proclaim their love for) these bands.

It’s just civilians doing all this nu-metal tweeting—not promoters or band members, near as I can tell. @giasee and @brownoso seem like normal folk, and are both listening to tons of Nickelback. This is kind of cute actually—they both tweeted all their songs at about the same time of day. In my mind, each is a gender that the other is attracted to, and they are otherwise compatible in important ways, and they’re soul mates and will someday discover that they’ve been simultaneously broadcasting their love of awful nu-metal and run away together.

Similarly @_Maryta_ and @jhoncubus are both #musicmonday-ing the heck out of some Incubus and are probably going to be ‘90s alt-rock married soon. (I checked, @jhoncubus doesn’t appear to be affiliated with the band, despite having part of their name in his name. I have part of Weird Al’s name in my name, so I should know that this doesn’t have to mean anything.) The Incubus romance might get a little kinky, actually: @ignachoenpiedra was also listening. Hot.

Full disclosure: I owned and listened to the Make Yourself album in high school. But unless Incubus suddenly begins making female-fronted garage-revival rock (which is basically all I listen to at the moment, because…I don’t know why, actually) you will never ever see me telling my entire Twitter feed that I’m currently listening to them.

@mrnicehandle, whose username I like enough to consider asking him to be my Twitter friend, is listening to Butterfly, by Crazy Town, otherwise known as “the song I declared the worst song in the world when it came out in 2000 and might still think is the worst song in the world now that @mrnicehandle has gone and gotten it stuck in my head.” Thanks @mrnicehandle. We’re not imaginary friends any more.

Role#mmodel: @Duarys told the world that he was listening to Kiss From A Rose (acoustic) by Seal. That takes moxy. I’m glad to know there are people in the world who don’t care what jerks like me think about them.

My #musicmonday pick: If I’m going to make fun of other people, I have to open myself up to mockery. This should be good fodder: I’ve been listening to the new Gaslight Anthem album streaming on NPR all day. No, really. All day. Fire away.